Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
80% of current SWG players are vets ?!?!
Kaynos1972
Member Posts: 2,316
According to http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/loadNews/4293 80% of the current SWG population are veteran players that were playing before the NGE. I find that hard to believe, so i'm making this little poll, please choose what's apply to you.
Comments
I reactivated my account about week ago to test the nge, cant say that i am impressed. Just as many bugs and broken content as before.
As far as i can se the server population is nowhere near what it was when i left a year ago, this is on starsider. There was more people in the coronet cantina on a normal night than total ammount of people in theed nowdays.
I dont know how SOE calculate their numbers but it sounds like BS to me, i only have to log in to learn the truth.
Look again at how they worded it. It's not 80% of vetrans are playing, it's 80% of players are vets. So even if there's only 10 people playing, as long as 8 are vets they're still correct. It's one of those rare occaisions that SOE says something truthful. Though out of habit they did phrase it to be misleading and follow it up with an outright lie about how many new players they have.
Also depends on what you are calling a Veteran Player? Is it a 3 month player or a 1 year person. And like all figures it can be manipulated to make someone look good or bad.
Of those 80% how many are just waiting for accounts to finish or die off? How many have logged on in the last 2 weeks. How many people are we counting in this? Is it all the players out there? Or just one server?
Never take stats without knowing all the figures. Even Political polls tell you that they talked to 1000 people and are accurate to 2% in one of 10.
Fadinaway
Playerbase Solutions
http://www.playerbasesolutions.com
Lesse
They reactivated every vet account in the history of the game free for 14 days.
Of COURSE a lot of vets were playing during that press release... LOL
Wait till Jan 26th and see how many people are still playing. By that time all the "free 30 days play" times will be up on the boxes that were under trees this year and all the vet account reactivations will be over. And the servers will be back to some semblance of 'normal'. Then you'll be able to see what the server pops really are.
Currently Playing: Dungeons and Dragons Online.
Sig image Pending
Still in: A couple Betas
Actually, that press release was sent out BEFORE the re-activation... so it is just a blatant lie.
Not a truth, from a certain point of view.
Shayde - SWG (dead)
Proud member of the Cabal.
It sounds great, so great in fact, I pitty those who canceled
I don't like it when you say things. - A Vanguard fan who does too.
09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0
How many accounts do you guys think were non-vets at each stage in the game? Why would 80% be a lie? Nobody new is playing, it has been over 80% vets for nearly a year and a half now. I don't think they are implying that 80% of SWG's vet accounts have been retained. Not that I really care about the vets though because without new players, the game is boring.
It's not easy to leave an MMOG.
First of all, it becomes a part of your daily life, as most players try to dedicate at least two hours in it daily. In a sense, the particular game you're playing becomes a habit.
Most importantly, however, it's the social factors that keep you in the game, even if you start becoming bored of the game's content. In an MMOG, you meet people and make virtual friends (usually your guild mates). Cancelling your subscription is similar to moving to another town. You won't see most of your old acquiantances for a long time, some of them probably never again, but only keep in touch (through instant messaging software) with a select few perhaps.
Currently playing:
* City of Heroes: Deggial, Assault Rifle/Devices Blaster. Server: Defiant.
* City of Villains: Snakeroot, Plant/Thorns Dominator. Server: Defiant.
Personally I love the part that says that 100,000 people have signed up for 14 day trial accounts. So that would be 100,000 people who are replacing the 100,000 people + who quit. Of which most are probably people who played until level 10 and then quit, or are vet players giving the new starter quests a try and then quit.
Of course PC Gamer has just blasted SOE by re-reviewing SWG. They gave it 27%
SOE knows what you like... You don't!
And don't forget... I am forcing you to read this!
Uh, Anarchy... I said they reactivated every account. The ACCOUNTS are active just waiting for the player to log in..
Thus lots of vets LOGGED IN to try things out.
Whether they STAY is up in the air.
Sorry that was so difficult for you to understand. Every time you post in defend of this craziness you only prove to me that you have shut your brain down when it comes to SWG.
Currently Playing: Dungeons and Dragons Online.
Sig image Pending
Still in: A couple Betas
Been thinking about this quote for a while...
If 80% of their current players are vets... and we already know that a huge chunk of vets have quit, bigger than any other time in the game's history....
Then hasn't the NGE thusly been proved to be a failure?
If 80% of the players are vets (and this has been true for the majority of the lifespan of SWG btw) then they're not really appealing to any new players are they?
And if more than 20% of the vets have left (Which I highly suspect), and only 20% of the current players are new... then doesn't that mean that they have absolutely seen a decline in subscribers?
Boy am I looking forward to seeing how they spin this in January once the trials and reactivation perks start to fade out and the real server populations start to show.
Currently Playing: Dungeons and Dragons Online.
Sig image Pending
Still in: A couple Betas
Please pardone me if I'm wrong here but the Official SOE quote, that we have here on the site, begins like this:
"Today, 80% of active players in Galaxies are veterans who were in the game prior to the new game enhancements (NGE). Its true that many players reacted to the new direction of the game by clicking cancel in the days immediately following the NGE announcement and in fact, our unique usage dropped by 10%."
I bolded and put in red the sentence that seems suspect to me. Again, please correct me if I'm wrong, but with this wording does this not only indicate that 80% of the players singed up today were there prior to the NGE.
In other words, they could have dropped to 10 subs and 8 of those are from before the NGE. If so, if I'm not reading this completely out of wack, then I don't see how this offers proof to SWG still being strong. It just seems to me to be more of a play on words then anything else. On top of that, they did not specify what they meant by Veteran, prior to NGE could mean 2 years ago, or someone that signed up 1 week before it hit, to me anyways???
Also, I noticed that they did not seem to mention those people who are signed up on multiple month subscriptions, so if I had a payed for my sub 3 months ago for a 6 month term, well then even though SWG has completely changed (which to me just sounds crimina, but thats another story) I'm stuck with the sub. I may not be playing, but I'm sure as heck still paying.
But then again, maybe I'm just lost and need to be told what they mean by veteran and active players.
Important Information regarding Posting and You
Hiya Shae
Yep you're reading it absolutely correctly. They never state in the interview how many active accounts they have (and probably because they're affraid to admit how many they actually lost) but merely say that "80% of active accounts are pre-nge vets". Note: NGE was released after the first of the month so EVERY Vet account would still, technically, be "active" because anyone who hit cancel on the 5th (when NGE hit) would still be active until December 1st when their current payment expires (longer if they're on one of the extended plans).
I suspect that if they had this same interview now their wording would be a bit different
And after January it'll be different again 
I'd love to see an interviewer peg them to a wall and ask them how many current paid subscribers the game has now.
Currently Playing: Dungeons and Dragons Online.
Sig image Pending
Still in: A couple Betas
Hiya Shae
Yep you're reading it absolutely correctly. They never state in the interview how many active accounts they have (and probably because they're affraid to admit how many they actually lost) but merely say that "80% of active accounts are pre-nge vets". Note: NGE was released after the first of the month so EVERY Vet account would still, technically, be "active" because anyone who hit cancel on the 5th (when NGE hit) would still be active until December 1st when their current payment expires (longer if they're on one of the extended plans).
I suspect that if they had this same interview now their wording would be a bit different
And after January it'll be different again 
I'd love to see an interviewer peg them to a wall and ask them how many current paid subscribers the game has now.
I think you both have hit the proverbial nail in the head. Anyway we look at it, it's all just spin.
SOE knows what you like... You don't!
And don't forget... I am forcing you to read this!
Well at least I know I wasn't the only one getting weird vibes with the SOE jumble word game.
Question on your note though El. I was under the impression, mostly just because it's the way it's always worked with my own SOE subscription, that your payment is due for renewal exactly 30 days of your sign up date. So for example, if I had signed up for EQ2 on November 22nd 2004, my payment will forever be taken out on the 22nd of every month from then on, unless you cancel and re-sub in the future, in which case the process repeats itself.
Thinking along those lines, is it that most people just sign up at the begining of the month or is there some other billing factor I'm unclear about ?
I completely agree with you about someone really, truly and honestly interviewing someone from SOE. No marketing BS, no fake numbers, just someone that really try and get the truth for them... Wouldn't that be the day !!!
Truth from SOE, don't think I've ever writen such a huge oxymoron before.
Important Information regarding Posting and You
<---- Been playing since beta.
Yea, I dont like the NGE, but, I love the game. And yes, I miss the good ol' days.
But, instead of dwelling on the past, like most of you, I am supporting the NGE, in hopes that SOE will work on it and create a better game. I trust SOE, I trust the devs, I do not trust the players.
But yea, I am looking forward to SWG2, in hopes of an even better StarWars experience.
fawd... I'm not about to start flame war with you or anything like that. And I consider myself a pretty open-minded person, so out of genuine curiosity, what reasons do you have to trust in SOE and the Devs. What reasons do you have not to trust the players?
I have given and heard millions of reasons on why SOE and the Devs are not to be trusted, but I don't believe I've ever heard the other side, someone who has reasons to trust them, so I genuinely would like to know.
SOE knows what you like... You don't!
And don't forget... I am forcing you to read this!
That's the error in the numbers as well. It is all about the billing cycle. It takes a month for you to not be considered active, you are active until your billing lapses.
So if you were billed last week, and cancel now... you're active until the, say 23rd of January.
It is the same fuzzy math they used with the post-cu numbers. They took the re-activations and counted them with all the people who had cancelled, yet were still active, and claimed a net gain. That later shook out to be a net loss the next month. But in that snapshot of time, it was a gain.
I'm SURE that's where the numbers come from here. They CLAIM in one passage that they lost "10% of the vets" Well, I'm sure thse were the quick vets like me who already lapsed before the publish. If you waited until the nge pushed, you were on the billing on the 15th... and still "active" until the 15th of december at least. (Unless you were coming up on the billing date and were fast.. probably say 10% if us?).
They can spin the numbers any way theey want.
Shayde - SWG (dead)
Proud member of the Cabal.
It sounds great, so great in fact, I pitty those who canceled
I don't like it when you say things. - A Vanguard fan who does too.
09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0
If you trust the devs then you've not been paying much attention to their posts for the last 5 years.
They've broken every promise ever made about SWG.
SOE flat out lied about the NGE not coming when we caught sight of the "starter kit" on amazon. They *lied* and said it was up there by mistake. That the NGE wasn't real.
When they were caught by a leak and someone posted about it on the official site they LIED and said no such changes were coming.
When they were PLANNING to remove ch and ranger and several other classes they LIED and said that they were going to 'fix' them.
Please explain how you feel SOE or the DEVS can be trusted? Please, I really want to know. I used to think they were honest too... but after the past 5 years of lie after lie and half-truth after half truth I've become a bit jaded. Hell they even suckered people into buying TOOW and then rolled NGE (which, I remind you, didn't exist) live the next WEEK.
Currently Playing: Dungeons and Dragons Online.
Sig image Pending
Still in: A couple Betas
Don't forget... they now give RotW free with the starter kit, after all 5 people bought it without it before.
Shayde - SWG (dead)
Proud member of the Cabal.
It sounds great, so great in fact, I pitty those who canceled
I don't like it when you say things. - A Vanguard fan who does too.
09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0
The way SOE/LA plays tricks with the numbers is amazing. Take a look at what they are suggesting here:
1) 80% of active players in Galaxies are veterans who were in the game prior to the new game enhancements (NGE)
2) our unique usage dropped by 10%
3) were seeing many former players return to the game and over 100,000 new players join Galaxies through the 10-Day Tria
Firstly, they are trying to allude to the 100,000 new trial players being 20% of the population, making the full number 500,000. I don't think even the pro-NGE people think that's true.
Secondly, if they lost 10% and 80% of the players are pre-NGE, does that mean only 10% of the players are the new type they are targetting? And how does that work with the 100,000 trial players?
If they aren't counting the 100k as active players, I think it's a sign of desperation to have to report the numbers of people using a free trial. It's meaningless in this context.
Thirdly, they are most definitely including the aforementioned accounts that have been paid for but canceled. And the phrase "unique usage" gives them a lot of leeway to play with the numbers. Unique usage might very well mean unique payment account, i.e. unique credit card. So a family of 20 could cancel, or a person with 5 accounts could cancel them all and for each of those groups, only *one* unique usage would be counted. Very suspect.
All in all, they are really stretching with these numbers here and are giving themselves a lot of room to manipulate the wording to give a sense of inflated population.
Just so we're all clear, the article that started this thread, the quote came from LucasArts NOT SOE. I realize most don't care, but if I don't make an effort to let people know that LucasArts is involved, I'll get called a retard again when I say say LucasArts has been posting all along people just misquote and call them SOE.
Second, what I've quoted from El did come from SOE (At least I think it did. I'd haven't done the actual reseach on the posts etc, so can't be 100% sure, but who is?)